Pyrophoric materials have widespread military and industrial applicability. As a result a number of materials and methods for their preparation have been developed and described. One such method—described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,895,609—employs high temperature processing conditions and the use of a concentrated solution of NaOH to produce pyrophoric foils. As may be appreciated, high temperatures and concentrated NaOH are not particularly suitable for flexible pyrophoric substrates and may pose environmental issues as well.
United States Patent Application Publication No. US 2006/0042417 describes the preparation of porous pyrophoric iron using sol-gel methods which are employed to generate high surface area porous iron (III) oxide-based solutes. While the methods disclosed in this US 2006/0042417 application advantageously do not employ caustic NaOH, they unfortunately do not produce a porous Fe that is sufficiently pyrophoric for a variety of military and/or industrial applications.
Accordingly—given their military and/or industrial importance—new pyrophoric materials and/or improved methods for their preparation would represent a significant advance in the art.